Story Rewrite

I found this exercise very interesting. It was a nice change in the class and I enjoyed the different plots in the stories. I didn't realize that all of us starting with the same first sentence could go in so many directions. When I got mine back I did not expect my story to take such a turn. It was pretty comical at the end. It was also crazy how just one single person could change up the story so much.

My first story:

She stood at the edge of a precipice, between one moment and the next. Debating which way to jump. Each direction holding a new place to start over. Starting over a whole new life, somewhere to find out the truth in the world. A choice between dark fairs, an endless field, or a world not yet discovered. Too easily she is tempted by a world she doesn't know. Heh, and you thought this was going to be about a pasty, depressed teenage girl who falls in love with another pasty teenager, didn't you? Scared to take a leap of any kind, she turns away from the unknown and goes back to the safe known. It was a Winchester padlock safe that she had named "known." She unlocked it with that trusty combination and removed her rifle, long and cold, and placed it in the  back of her shaking throat. Her lifeless body falling until it tumbled straight down the precipice.

I revised the story and this is what I came up with:

She stood at the edge of a precipice between one moment and the next. Debating which way to jump. Each direction holding a new place to start over. Starting over with a new whole life, one where she could find the truth that she had been searching for. A choice between the safe route and the unknown. The second one tempting her to walk into the mists. Wondering what the unknown has in store for her if she decided to take that first step. Deciding that she is done living on the safe route, her first step into the unknown is exciting. Two more steps and all of a sudden her footing is broken and she's tumbling to her doom.


I changed my first story into something more serious. Even though there are some sentences that I kept, such as the first three sentences. I changed the rest to become more gloomy and sort of dark, maybe something that a person might actually be able to relate too. Choosing a route or path to take their life down. Sometimes not making the right decision but learning from the mistakes.

Maps to Anywhere 2nd Half

For the second half I got a little confused, but for the most part it seemed like a flashback from the beginning of the book. Some new characters were introduced, like Lester and Cora, and also Bernard's aunt. I liked the big story from the part of The House Of The Future. This story starts off with Bernard and his mother and father going to Tomorrowland to see this futuristic house model. Bernard is fascinated and starts to imagine what it would be like to live in this house. How much easier it would be if his family lived in this house. It goes into grave detail about the different aspects of the house and the amazing features that come with this house. One thing that, or person, that isn't at this tour of Tomorrowland, is Bernard's brother Gary. In the first half he is only mentioned once or twice and he is already dead in the first half. This half and especially this story is more about his death and how the family coped. That is what I am going to focus on mostly.

"I pictured the progress of my brother's disease as a gathering of dark clouds that closed off any avenue of light, clusters of heavy, tentative drops, a downpour held in suspension for a year. Below it stood our stucco house, my parents wishful within its walls, Father postdating payments on our car, mother blowing ghostly smoke" (101). Gary's illness is progressing and starting to really effect the rest of the family. I think it is really strange that they compare the disease to a gathering of clouds that close off avenues, right before a thunder storm. This made the disease seem like it was sudden and the family was not expecting it to be this bad or progress this quickly. It hit the family hard, by the line that talks about the Father not paying the car payment and the picture of the mother just sitting in a chair smoking cigarettes repeatedly, starring off into space.

"It rained the evening my brother died. As we drove home from the hospital, another city was reflected in the pavement, its palm trees smeared, its marquees incoherent, its upturned towers sunk in puddles. Father drove the Plymouth slowly, apologizing for every wrong turn. Mother slumped in the front seat, sedated with a dose of Miltown, unable to lift her cigarette, softly asking "Where's my son? Swimming with the stars?" (101). The dreadful feeling that comes after you finally realize your loved one is gone. Not knowing what to do or say to each other so just riding in silence. Every thing around seems so dull and lifeless. Nothing is beautiful anymore. His father isn't paying attention to where he is driving anymore. It seems to just be automatic to him at this point, except he keeps making mistakes. His mother can't even puff a cigarette because it hurts so bad. The pain is almost physical. Mother wondering why it had to be her son, why he had to be taken away from her already.

This section was a little bit of a debby downer. Especially the future home section. It was so detailed that I could picture the progression of his brother, getting worse and worse as time goes on. Bernard trying to ease the pain by keeping his brother distracted, but in the end realizing it was a lost cause. Mother scrubbing and disinfecting Gary's room, almost as if he was contagious, which in turn probably made Gary feel even worse than he already did… She tried to get him help but also made him feel like he was alienated by disinfecting his room like he was a germ himself. I think Bernard was affected the most because he did spend so much time with Gary. They would swim together and play board games or  guessing games. Like Gary was gone in physical sense but never in mental sense.

Maps To Anywhere First Half

When I read anything; nonfiction, fiction, or poetry, I like to find parts that I can relate to or parts that really interest me. I think that is why I like novels more because I can pick out situations that appeal to myself and my life. It doesn't have to be my whole like, it could just be a situation that I am in or even something that has happened to one of my family members or a friend. That might be why I enjoyed some parts of this first half of Maps to Anywhere. While I started reading this, snooze fest! Normally if I get bored within the first few pages of a book then I stop reading it. Since we are required to read this, I decided that I must force myself to move on. And then it got interesting!

On page 4 I really related to a section that was half way down the page. "My own name was problematic. While Jeff and Mary could go to the five-and-dime and find cups and wallets bearing their names--evidence that they belonged to a vast and accepted subset of humanity--Bernard was always out of the question, however much I'd spin the racks and dig in the bins with hope;  Andy, Art, Bill, Bobby, Charles." I always had this problem when I was smaller. Whether it was a keychain, a fake license plate cover for a bike, or anything else that stores decided to put names on, there was never one with my name on it. Of course they had Bobby, with a 'y' but none with the correct spelling. I can relate to this poor kid that just wanted to find one thing with his name on it, but manufacturers just seemed to skip right over his name. With this passage I started to get interested in the book and felt that there was some hope after all.

There was another line that really caught my attention. On page 8, "...when love sought justice, they were both blind." This section in the book talks about his dad becoming a lawyer and how he had his own office. His dad had a over the top attraction to the other sex that it lead his dad to cheat on his mother multiple times, or that's what it sounded like in the book. But those certain words caught my eye. It made it seem like love and justice can't coexist. There is either one or the other, which I don't think is particularly true. Love and justice can go together just fine just depending on the people involved and the situation. There are certain situations, such as a courtroom, where justice must come before love. It seems like in society now there is a division between the two, love and justice. You can either have one or the other.

I'm excited to keep reading more and more from this book and trying to keep relating to it in ways that make me think back in time!

Essay Packet 1/ Goldberg Packet 3

I have always been taught that essays had to be about facts, you needed data and raw materials to write one... and don't forget to source everything! Leave no details out and it must be at least 10 pages long, double spaced, 12 pt font, and times new roman. This was imprinted into my brain from the start of high school. When I started reading into the essay packet, that's kind of what I expected. To my surprise the so called "essays" seemed just like stories. I enjoyed reading them, instead of feeling like I'm just reading about facts, there were deeper meaning behind theses "essays" and I enjoyed trying to figure them out.

One essay I really enjoyed was Naomi Shihab Nye's Mint Snowball. This essay was about a great-grandfather that invented something called the Mint Snowball. People drove from miles and miles away to come enjoy this recipe. It was kept a secret from everyone, even his own family until he decided to sell it to someone in town for $100. At first I thought this was suppose to have a tear jerking feeling about how people grow old and give up on something that use to be important and pretty much throw it away for chump change, but the end involves the  great grandson and how his mom explains this story from her point of view to him. How she use to eat the concoction and swivel around on the chairs. She even tried to recreate the recipe long after it was sold, but could never get it quite right. The ending is what really caught my attention and drew me in. The great grandson explains how he is like the recipe. Lost, not understanding where his place in the world might be. Everything has changed in this small town and he wants to be like a small, traditional town. He is knowledgeable in the daily routines in life, but feels like he needs more, or he is missing something.

In the Goldberg Packet, there is a section called use loneliness. You want the reader to be able to relate in some way to the writing. Using loneliness helps the reader understand, "it's ache creates urgency to reconnect with the world." Everyone has had feelings of loneliness. Let the loneliness guide you to something that will help you express yourself and reconnect back with the world. In the essay Mint Snowball, the great grandson feels lonely. He knows something is missing but doesn't know what yet. He misses the old town and disagrees with what it has turned into, missing the local feel of a small town. Not being able to try that mint concoction that his great grandfather sold for $100. He's trying to find that place in the world where he belongs but he doesn't know where it is yet.

Fiction Packet 3

I found these stories a little bit easier to understand than some of the previous ones we had to read. Even though they were easy to read for the most part, every person could have their own interpretation of each different story. The authors kind of left that part up to the reader.

The section I paid the most attention to was the Peter Markos section. There were three different stories technically but the same theme ran throughout. I took it as since they were from the same book that these individual stories were kind of like chapters in the book. I noticed in the first story  called When it Rains it Rains a River, that the word us brothers is used a lot. "Mud, us brother, we can't get enough mud." Through out the story the brothers are always referred to as us brothers. I think the author is trying to create unity between the brothers, making it seem like they are almost one person instead of multiple. Another theme that starts in this one and runs throughout the others is this idea of mud. In this one it is almost like we are made out of mud, "When Girl looks down to see the mud that she is made from.." Mud may be a metaphor for something else, which I have not yet discovered.

The second story, The Singing Fish, also continues on with the theme of mud. In this one I was reminded of cavemen and how they would communicate, since there wasn't really any spoken language yet. "Us brothers, what we see, inside this cave, we see pictures --stick-figure fish--on these mudcaved walls." This reminded me of hyderglifics and how cavemen would draw pictures on the walls of the caves to express something or to try and communicate with one another. In this story, mud is a shelter, a need for survival, which makes it very important in this certain story.

The third and final story What Our Mother Always Told Us, depicts mud in a negative way. The brothers love to play in the mud but, "What our mother always told us was, Don't, don't go, don't go get muddy, don't walk into this house with mud..." In this story mud is suppose to  be a bad thing. The mother doesn't want it in the house, she doesn't want the brothers to go get muddy. While in the second story mud was how we build our shelter and it was needed for communicating. Throughout the stories the meaning of the mud and the significance changes drastically, from the brothers needing it to create and survive, to it being a negative quality in life.

Douglas Kearney Writing

When I first started to read Douglas Kearney's writing I immediately believed it was some form of racisim. There is one full page of just the word "Negro" with little sayings about each letter in the word. The very first suppose ably short story is called Radio, and it talks a lot about blacks and the radio. This one actually really confused me. The second stanza says, "the first black to speak the word radio knew it meant the same as blood." These lines made me think of how competitive the music industry is. Kind of like the saying, "you either sink or swim." The music industry is very competitive which could be why Douglas compares being on the radio to blood. You have to be tough and ready to work in order to music industry.

A couple pages down from the first line I picked out is another line in the story The Voltron Communiques, "monsters are coming to tear you into yourself. black lion, take that key out your chest, the screaming wind on your  back bumrushes you off your pedestal. see how it lifts your foes, too." The first part of this passage about the black lion, reminded me about the Wizard Of Oz and how the lion is going to the great Oz because he doesn't have any courage. So this part talking about take that key out your chest, meaning to me that you need to have courage even if you're ready to become a coward and chicken out. The second part of the passage talking about your foes. Everybody wants to be your friend when you're high on top and have everything going right, but when you're "knocked off your pedestal" then you find out who your true friends are, and if some of your foes are the ones who knocked you down than they may begin to rise and capture the spotlight.

Overall, I'm not sure if this is meant to be short stories. They all look like poems, more than stories. There doesn't look like there is much structure to any of the sections. Even though there appears to be plenty of punctuation throughout the whole thing, but there are rarely any capital letters, which would mean the start of the new sentence. I didn't find any flow in the story and often found myself reading it like I would a poem, not by punctuation but by the line breaks. I believe his writing has a lot of meaning but in my mind they are not short stories, but in fact poetry that may be trying to impersonate short stories.

Juice

When I first started reading this book I thought I understood what was going on. I thought it was about this person that was left in his society by himself. He left his town and when he returned the town was deserted, as stated on page 13 "I am not concerned about how the townspeople will express themselves upon their return; they could come in happiness or in extreme anger and it would not bother me. The point is that they return." As I kept reading throughout the story the theme changed. Now I started thinking that maybe the beginning was the present of the main characters life, and throughout the book he was reminiscing of past experiences he had had with people. He was so set on the townspeople returning and on page 19 he states, "In the appearance of any species there is an element of its disappearance and within its disappearance a particle of return." So while everything disappeared, he also said that many of the plants and all the fruit has disappeared, there is always that hope of them returning.

There are certain parts in this book that reminded me of other things that I have either read for the class already, or a movie that I've seen before. One line is on page 9 and its says, "The town took a child from every family, plus each child's third eldest cousin, and started to call us a gang." In the movie 300, which is all about Sparta and the wars they were in, in the beginning it shows that any couple who had a baby boy would have to give him up for training when he was very small. If the child was weak or diseased he was thrown off a cliff to face his death. The others were turned into fearless warriors to help protect the civilization. The line from the book reminded me of the movie. Another line from this book reminded me of the short story we had to read for class, Internal. "You get to a point in isolation where you have to grab the reins; you can't let the silence get to you" (Page 15). The point in the Internal when the interns are starting to lose their mental state because of being in silence for so long. This line in the story reminded me of that because it says that you can't let the silence get to you. The main character is alone in his society and still finds ways to keep himself occupied somehow. If he didn't keep himself occupied he would have ended up "going nuts" to say just like the interns in the Internal.

Overall, this story just confused me. It jumped around a lot and did not hold a constant theme all throughout. At one point he is by himself in his society, another part towards the end he is with his neighbors and one of the neighbors goes missing and nobody can find her. Some point during the story he is on a train, just people watching. Other points hes talking about his lovers. I had to closely take mental notes of where the character was during the part that I was reading at any given moment, because the setting changed so much and so rapidly. I'm very confused as to if he was actually alone or if others were around him, and one final thought, how did Juice actually play a part in this? Since the title is Juice, I figured it would've had a greater effect on the story, but it only shows up a couple times explaining how much he loved juice at one point, and at other points he just couldn't bring himself to drink more juice. What is it about the juice?!